First Month of Spanish Anti-Piracy law yields 79 Takedowns

After the first month of the controversial Sinde law being in place in Spain, copyright holders have filed almost 300 complaints and 79 website take down requests of websites said to be infringing copyright.

The Sinde law, known internationally as the Spanish version of the Stop Online Piract Act (SOPA), allows copyright holders and their representatives to contact the Spanish Ministry for Culture, pointing out instances of infringement. These are then reviewed by the ministry and at its discretion, can send requests to the sites to cease their actions as well as shut them down if necessary. Any sites outside of the country that it deems unwilling to halt will see ISPs given a court order to block them.

So far the ministry has yet to act on any of the claims, though potentially the entire process could take as little as one month, so anytime in the next few weeks could see the first set of actions in regards to the complaints.

When the law was brought into play on 1st March, Spanish citizens performed an ingenious form of protest by illegally linking to a file by opponent of the bill Eme Navarro, who then made official complaints to the ministry in an attempt to find out more about the process and to swap its presumably far from limitless staff.

There's no word as of yet about whether any of the complaints made are with regards to the protest.